Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 2:19 pm on 15 January 2020.
Well, I hope the Member will be pleased when we publish the final version of the curriculum guidance at the end of this month that we have listened very carefully to the feedback from the initial period with regard to the Siarter. External evaluation is ongoing and, due to the changes to the timetable of the evaluation, the project will now not be completed until the end of February. As a result, new guidance will not be published until the summer term. Schools will be expected to implement the new framework from September 2020, and the Siarter Iaith co-ordinators have been informed of this new timetable. So, it is the delays around the evaluation work that have led to the knock-on effect. But the Siarter is going to be a very important way in which we develop the language.
One of the challenges we sometimes face, especially for children for whom Welsh is not their language at home, is that, too often, language is seen as something that happens within the classroom, rather than a living, breathing part of the entire school community in all its regards. And so being able to build upon speaking the language outside of the classroom will be a really important part of, first of all, developing individuals' skills and proficiency, but also sending a very clear message of the place of the language within not just the life of school, but the daily lives of our children and the communities in which they live.